A pioneering system to provide police with footage in the fight against serious crime and terrorism is about to be introduced across Britain.

The Major Incident Public Portal system (Mipp) will take footage from bomb attacks and murder scenes fed directly to major incident rooms.

It will slash the time it takes for vital evidence - shot by the public - to get from the scene and to detectives.

But it will also provide a platform for people trying to trace loved ones in the middle of a terror attack similar to the Manchester atrocity.

And it gives all 43 police forces in England and Wales, Police Scotland and the PSNI the chance to share vital clues on crimes around Britain.

Mike Barton, Durham Chief Constable and National Police Chiefs Council lead on Crime, told how the system will revolutionise crime fighting - and was inspired by the aftermath of the Boston Marathon terror attack of 2013, which killed three people and injured hundreds.

"The controlling premise was that Boston police and FBI were snowed under with photos and video footage of the event," he said.

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"In those golden hours, the early stages of the inquiry, if they had a better mechanism to receive it and index it, browse it and then prioritise actions they would have been in a far better place.

"When I saw that, I realised that what we needed in the UK."

At present, officers have to physically go and collect footage from witnesses, which is hugely time-consuming.

It delays viewing of potentially critical information in the crucial first minutes and hours of a major inquiry.

Under the new system, hundreds of images can be sent within a matter of minutes to detectives investigating a terror attack or major crime.

Mipp goes live in a matter of weeks, and will accept moving images as well as stills. They will be uploaded onto the the database system called Holmes after the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.

Durham lead on behalf of all 43 UK forces, and it will be used in Northern Ireland and Police Scotland using the same intelligence systems. Analysts and computer experts will share a cloud system, so that police at opposite ends of the country can share data and assist in crimes hundreds of miles away from their patch.

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Mr Barton added: "The reason it is so important is that we are able to get information from Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat and they can upload an image in Whatsapp.

"Historically we get information after going out to interview people.

"That is still the backbone, but this gives us that portal onto social media."

He used the London Bridge attack of last year as an example of how crucial the new system can be.

"Do you fear a member of your family is there?," added Mr Barton.

"There will be a form on the Mipp. Instead of ringing us, when we may be inundated with calls, you fill in on line the details on the member of your family, and you can upload an image of the person you are worried about and we can get back to you as soon as humanly possible to tell you if that person is safe."

Holmes came in after the Yorkshire Ripper murders, when Peter Sutcliffe was finally convicted we realised he had been in the inquiry 20 times.

None of those connections had been made.

"We are now on the cloud everybody can help everybody else on a murder," added Mr Barton.

"This is feeding into a system which is already there, using capacity which we have but just in a different way.

"We have designed it ourselves so instead of receiving phone calls, writing it down, sending someone to go and get a photo, all of that comes in and is automatically updated onto the Holmes system.

"The public are being our typists in a murder inquiry. But it will feed into all types of investigations - cold case reviews, all the historic inquiries where members of the public may have vital new information."

Mipp has only taken text information from phones so far, but within the next few weeks they will also be able to upload still and moving images.

A Mipp appeal can be activated as soon as an incident room is set up and information uploaded to the system within a matter of minutes.